Call for ideas to help mitigate energy crisis

The City of Cape Town is calling for innovative and smart ideas that will help to mitigate the current energy crisis; move the city toward cleaner energy sources and lower carbon development and that will also better enable a growing green economy.

Whether it be powering communities through wave energy; using the City’s stormwater infrastructure to create localised hydro-electric energy schemes; smarter metering; smart street poles; or mini-grids for informal settlements and backyard dwellings, the City wants to hear all potentially workable proposals.

The focus is also on the use of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and Internet of Things to ensure that Cape Town is future-fit.

“As part of the City’s ongoing efforts to become more sustainable and resilient, it continues to look at an array of innovative energy solutions. This is to ensure that Cape Town moves away from the country’s current sole dependence on Eskom for power and to drive cleaner sources of energy to best perform on the City’s commitment of reducing carbon emissions drastically in the face of climate change.

“To make sure that the City is able to create the environment that would be required for such alternative, sustainable innovations the City wants to get a better idea of what could be realistically possible within the legislative and municipal framework that the City operates in,” said mayor Dan Plato.

Some areas of interest for the City include renewable energy, demand side management and load shifting, energy efficiency, smart metering,micro-grids in un-electrifiable areas and backyard dwellings, alternative mobility and alternative waste management.

Workable proposals must be submitted by no later than close of business on Friday June 14. Participants may submit one or more submissions depending on which areas of interest they are addressing.

Log on to www.capetown.gov.za and click on the trending button labelled “submit a sustainable energy solution”.

The Bolander (formerly the Helderberg Sun) was established in 1996 and renamed Bolander in 2007. This long established popular community title includes the key shopping centres Somerset Mall and Waterstone Mall within its distribution area.